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How the New UK Budget Could Affect Business Marketing and Advertising Spend in 2025

The latest UK Budget has landed, and businesses across the country are already working out what it means for their bottom line. Budgets shape confidence, spending behaviour, and the choices companies make about everything from staffing to marketing. For many businesses, marketing is one of the first areas affected when costs rise or economic uncertainty increases. At Novus Marketing Solutions, we want to break down what the new Budget could mean for businesses and how it might shape their advertising decisions in the months ahead.


Red briefcase with scratches sits among scattered newspapers titled "UK Budget," on a beige background. Papers appear in motion.

1. Business Rates Relief Gives Some Firms Breathing Space

The government has confirmed changes to business rates relief for retail, hospitality, and leisure businesses. For many smaller companies, this offers some much needed breathing room. Lower overheads can free up cash that may be reinvested into areas that support growth. This includes design updates, website refreshes, new video content, or seasonal campaigns.


What this means for marketing teams

  • Companies that benefit from the relief may feel more confident increasing their marketing activity.

  • It allows smaller businesses to maintain or restart marketing that had been paused during tougher months.

  • Agencies like Novus could see more enquiries from high street brands, hospitality firms, and experience based businesses.


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2. Rising Operating Costs May Tighten Some Budgets

Despite the relief for some sectors, the Budget highlights ongoing challenges. Many businesses continue to face higher costs across wages, materials, energy, and supply chains. When outgoings rise, discretionary budgets can be squeezed, and marketing is unfortunately one of the first areas to come under scrutiny.


How this affects marketing teams and budgets

  • Some businesses may shift from large, expensive campaigns to smaller, more strategic content packages.

  • Marketing managers may be asked to justify every pound spent, increasing the demand for measurable results and clear return on investment.

  • Creative agencies may be asked for flexible plans, scalable content packages, or shorter retainers.


Opportunity for this environment benefits agencies that can provide high impact work that stays cost efficient. Video shorts, social campaigns, template-based content, and performance-focused website updates can all offer strong value without high upfront costs.


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3. Economic Uncertainty Encourages Smarter, Not Smaller, Marketing

The Budget highlights that inflation and cost-of-living pressures are still affecting households and consumer behaviour. When people spend less, businesses often react by cutting their advertising. However, history shows that brands that stay visible during uncertain times often perform better in the long run.


What does this mean for marketing strategy?

  • Instead of pausing activity, businesses benefit from refining it.

  • Strategic marketing becomes more important than high-volume posting.

  • Businesses may favour targeted campaigns that speak directly to their strongest customer groups.

  • Story-led videos, brand refreshes, and content built around trust and clarity become more valuable.


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4. Sector-specific impacts May Shift Advertising Spend

Some industries face more pressure than others. In particular, sectors affected by increased taxation or tighter regulation, such as gambling, may reduce advertising spend significantly. This can alter the competitive landscape in the wider marketing world and change where agencies look for new opportunities.


Impact on marketing agencies

  • Some industries will reduce marketing spend immediately.

  • Others, particularly those less impacted by tax changes, will maintain or increase their activity.

  • Agencies can focus their outreach on industries that benefit from stability or relief in the new Budget.


5. A Greater Demand for Proving Results

When budgets tighten, marketing teams are expected to demonstrate performance clearly. This increases the importance of data, reporting, and optimisation.


How this shapes marketing decisions

  • Businesses will want to see results from every campaign.

  • Agencies will need to use analytics, performance reviews, and clear reporting to justify ongoing spend.

  • Creative work that communicates value clearly, such as explainer videos or conversion focused web pages, becomes even more important.


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6. Why Now Is the Time to Refine, Not Retreat

While the Budget brings challenges, it also brings opportunities. The businesses that adapt quickly and continue communicating with their customers will be the ones that stay competitive. Marketing does not need to stop. It needs to work smarter.


At Novus Marketing Solutions, we help businesses create content, campaigns, and websites that stay effective during changing economic conditions. With the right strategy, even a smaller budget can go a long way.



The new UK Budget creates winners and losers, but the core message for businesses is clear. Marketing needs to be strategic, measurable, and meaningful. Whether companies choose to scale back or reinvest, the brands that stay visible and communicate well are the ones that continue to grow. By planning ahead and focusing on the work that creates real impact, businesses can navigate the months ahead with confidence.


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Ready to adapt your marketing strategy to the new Budget? The Novus team is here to help.

How the New UK Budget Could Affect Business Marketing and Advertising Spend in 2025

How the New UK Budget Could Affect Business Marketing and Advertising Spend in 2025

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Keyword play-offs

  • Novus
  • Oct 26, 2020
  • 3 min read

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Pay-per-click advertising is a mystical art to most business owners. However, we all know the basic function of a search engine…that it tries to match words within websites and other content on the internet with a word or phrase a user types into Google. And that, once matched, the content containing those keywords is pushed towards the top of the search results for the user to act upon.


That’s how SEO works, in a nutshell. Organic SEO, at least.


There is a way to ‘override’ organic search results. Pay-per-click advertising. It takes the same principles as above, but you pay Google et al to show your advert above the organic listings.


The best thing is: you only pay the relevant search engine when someone sees your advert and acts on it, i.e. when they click through to your website/landing page/other content. Your advert could run/be shown in listings for a year and not cost you anything if no one clicks on it (which isn’t what you want. No click-through may mean no advertising costs, but it means no leads or customers, too!)


PPC doesn’t charge you on the amount of words you use in your advert. It doesn’t judge you on the size of your company (which is a huge plus). It just charges you for the keywords you include. And this is what makes the pricing of PPC differ. Some keywords are more coveted and expensive than others—mainly because they’re typed into the search engine more often, which makes them more valuable.


A keyword phrase such as ‘marketing agency in Doncaster’, whilst it may have a little competition, would not have as many rivals vying for the top spot as ‘marketing agency in the UK’. This makes it a cheaper option, which is why it’s good to niche down or be location-specific if you can.


You also need to consider what people may type into a search engine if they’re looking for what you offer. If a small business or individual is looking to work with a local agency, they will likely type their geographical location into Google; if this is the case, ‘marketing agency Doncaster’ would therefore be a good keyword phrase to pay for.


If, however, you are a large, national agency looking to attract large companies as clients, then it would be worth paying to be at the top spot for the more generic and competitive term ‘marketing agency in the UK’.


Whilst you may think the best outcome is to be in position one on page one of Google’s listings for a specific keyword/phrase, this is not the be all and end all.


It will be more difficult to land the ‘top spot’, and, if you’re on a budget, which most businesses are, it may also drain your funds and limit you to that one phrase. How do you know potential customers in need of your services won’t be typing in ‘SEO providers near me’ or ‘help get me on page one of Google’?


Being top dog on Google also takes more work to remain there, compared to being slightly further down the search results. You need to constantly outspend and out-promote your rival that’s taking up position two, as well as everyone else beneath you.


If you are on a budget when it comes to your marketing and SEO/PPC practices, consider spending it on a few different keywords and phrases, with the intention of reaching position three or four for these keywords in search results. It’s not a given that prospects will automatically choose the first business listed. There are other things that may sway their actions within the listings, such as your Google My Business profile, social proof/customer reviews, imagery, and your ‘quality score’ (i.e. Google’s perception of you, your keywords and your advert).


Being in the running for a few different keywords may be the equivalent of casting your net wider, which could result in more leads than if you put all your money and effort against one keyword/phrase alone. It may also cost you less per click to receive each lead than if you aimed for the first position only.


There’s a lot more to keywords, PPC and SEO than the basics in this article. Our point is, it’s not necessarily beneficial to put all of your money and efforts into landing the first result on Google if you could get better returns by lowering your sights towards a position further down the page.


Interested in such results but not quite as enamoured about learning everything to do with PPC and SEO? Why not let Novus create and place your PPC adverts on your behalf? Call 07983 575934 or visit https://www.novusmarketingsolutions.com/ for more information.


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